Page 53

53

THE SHIT HITS THE WALL

“ N othing,” Léon mumbled.

Souveraine slapped his arm.

“Léon has something to tell you right now, Catherine.”

He glared at Souveraine as though she could possibly understand the gravity of the situation.

“I don’t!”

“And if he doesn’t tell you,” she threatened, “I am going to tell you.” This she addressed to Léon, complete with narrowed eyes and intimidating tone.

How badly he wanted Henry.

How he needed his arms and his guidance.

How he needed that chest to fall on.

Which he would never fall on again.

But then, neither would Catherine.

She remained in the doorway, perfectly silent, but with a black horror in her eyes.

A clear foreboding, waiting on the words she had more right than anyone else to hear.

Ashamed of himself, both for his callousness and his fear, Léon said to Souveraine, “I need émile gone.”

“What is it?” asked Catherine, and there was a static about her.

There was an energy, powerful and unnerving, that lifted the tendrils of her hair ever so slightly from about her shoulders, that seemed to make her very arms shimmer along the edges.

“Take him out,” Léon insisted.

“I think I should be here,” Souveraine replied.

Urgently, “Please do this for me. It is the last thing I will ever ask of you. Please, Souveraine. Please, do it now.”

“Léon—”

“Please!” He shouted, tears starting to his eyes.

There was a tense standoff, but Souveraine’s head eventually dipped in compliance, and she walked past Catherine and out the door with only a sympathetic glance for each of them.

Léon waited for the front door shut behind Souveraine and émile.

Catherine must have known that was what he was waiting for, as she kept perfectly still in the interim, eyes locked with Léon’s.

The very moment the door clicked, she said, “Guillotin just left. Again. I cannot think why he needed to be here twice in one day to talk about the machine. Especially as Henry’s article is sold already. And I cannot think why Henry’s room is locked. Or why he would not answer my calls. And I am being very calm with you.”

“You are,” Léon whispered.

He’d seen what happened to the cafe and the streets of Saint-Quentin.

He’d witnessed the weeks of red rain, and Henry’s worn-down determination to keep her happy all those years.

There was a flicker of light about her fingertips.

“Well?”

“He’s…” An enormous ceramic bowl on a bench exploded, launching a razor-sharp shard across Léon’s cheek.

He raised a hand to slow the hot blood.

“Catherine, don’t.”

The doorframe around her splintered, running a crack along the wall as the very floor began to shake.

Léon dashed forward, clamping down on her arms, and instantly, he was hurled back with a shock that smashed from her skin, straight through his hands.

He hit the floor hard.

“You could kill him!” he shouted.

“You have to stop!”

“Could?” she whimpered, breath coming fast and weak in her chest, her hands tight at her throat.

“Then he is not?”

Thrown to the side as the floor listed, clambering to his feet to try to get close to her again, “Not yet. But Catherine, he wouldn’t want you to do this. He wants you to be happy. And we will stay with you.”

“Stay with me?” she yelled.

“What do you mean? Why would I need you to…” Her eyes darted to the staircase.

“Henry!” She bolted for the stairs, and Léon stumbled after her as the room swayed away from him, knocking him into the wall.

“Catherine!” He grasped the bannister to pull himself up the stairs, Catherine moving ahead of him swift and unencumbered, but each step cracking beneath her feet as she ran.

Léon put a foot to the first step, which collapsed under it.

“Catherine, no!”

Holding the railings tight, he climbed after her, falling and clambering up, struggling as enormous splinters upended and dug into his shins, tripping, but never stopping until he gained the landing, where he fell down in time to see her run to Henry’s door and slam two fists against it.

It was locked, and they both knew it, but she thrust her hands into her hair and screamed, and the doorframe caved, loosening an enormous chunk of plaster from the ceiling, which narrowly missed Léon.

The door was weak on its hinges, and she used brute strength to smash it in.

She stumbled over the mess, then froze in a picture of despair as her eyes fell on Henry.

“Henry?” she whispered.

She crawled onto his bed, hands on his face, weeping, “Henry? Wake up.” She slapped his face softly, then looked back at Léon.

“Why doesn’t he wake?”

“He’s sick, Catherine. He’s too sick and he can’t wake. If we could wake him?—”

A loud crackle sounded and the room lit with the flames in the hearth growing higher.

“What’s wrong with him? Why won’t he wake?”

“It’s blood poisoning.”

With a strange laugh, “That’s not possible.”

“He-Guillotine said there are things— things —creatures in his body. And they are attacking him. And I don’t understand?—”

“Don’t be stupid. Henry can kill things. Any creatures. Why won’t you tell me the truth? How could you keep this from me?”

“He’s sick!” Léon yelled.

“He’s…” He staggered over the writhing floor.

“Feel him. Feel him! Look at these cuts all over him.” Léon wrenched back the sheets to show where the leeches had fed, the bruises where his skin had been cupped and sliced to bleed him.

“Feel him!” He put her hand to his forehead.

“It’s his arm. It’s an infection. And it’s in his blood.”

She pressed fingers to Henry’s biceps, the small bandage just covering the worst of the infection, leaving the rest black and exposed.

“That’s where he got shot.” The words flew like a knife into Léon’s gut.

“It’s where he got shot!” She cast all her furious, desperate rage at him.

“Where he got shot for you !” On this last, her voice turned deep and growlingly preternatural.

Léon’s gaze was fixed on hers so fearfully that neither of them saw Henry’s hands clench.

Her eyes bled black through the irises, inky veins turning the whites grey.

“It was you! He loved you, and you couldn’t love him back, and he’s dying for you!”

“That’s not true.” Léon stumbled away from her as she sprang at him, an unseen jolt shaking Henry’s body from head to toe.

“Look what he did for you! He’s dying for you.” Wild eyes searched the ceiling as if she could eviscerate heaven itself with her scorn.

“You can’t take him from me like this!” Thrusting fingertips into her temple, she screamed.

Léon covered his ears, the sound like a dagger.

Every window in the room burst, and a million shards of glass fell to the courtyard below where Souveraine waited with émile.

Catherine flicked her glowing hands, sparks dancing at her fingertips as she levelled a finger at him.

“I would have taken him away safe. I would have shot you in the head and left you in the pit.” Henry’s shoulder twitched so hard his whole arm moved, but neither Léon nor Catherine noticed it.

Catherine’s full hand flung out long, and Léon’s back smacked against the wall, as if pushed by the vicious air itself.

The flames in the fireplace grew, licking the tiles that framed it, lapping at the wallpaper.

The lamp on Henry’s bedside flared hotter, its glass blackening.

The breath came fast and deep into his chest then, and his eyes began to flutter rapidly beneath their lids.

“I’m sorry,” Léon wept.

“I wish I could take it back.” And Léon wanted her to kill him.

He wanted her to rip his heart out.

He wanted it over and done with because he believed it was entirely true.

It was his fault. He was cursed from birth, and he should never have let Henry touch him, because nothing good was ever due to come of his existence.

“I love him,” he said.

“I love him too much.”

“You don’t love him!” Catherine yelled.

“He is my world! You call this love? He is my everything, and I have nothing!” And as a cry of pure pain exploded from her lips, her hand squeezed into a fist. Léon’s heart clenched in his chest, as though her very fingers were scrunching it.

He felt the grip of her agony, and his body slid sharply up the wall, as though lifted by the very heart she seemed determined to obliterate.

A crackle of heat burst in Léon’s chest, pain in his heart corresponding to the blue sparks at her fingertips.

Souveraine crashed into the room, falling over the broken door, grasping the wall for support.

She assessed everything in a heartbeat, climbed to her feet, and ran to Catherine, stroking at her hair.

“Cathy, stop. Please. It’s not him. Don’t do this.”

Catherine's breath came back into her chest and she heaved with the need for oxygen. “It’s his fault.”

“It’s no one’s fault. It’s life, Cathy. It’s cruel, but it’s just life. Henri wanted to change that. He wanted to fix it all. Destroying the man he loves won’t bring him back.”

“Nothing will bring him back,” Catherine screamed. She threw a second arm out towards Léon, a shower of blue flying across the room, landing on the carpet, on the bed, on Henry.

Henry’s eyes fluttered open, and it may have been barely a second, but Souveraine caught it. “Catherine,” she whispered. “Catherine, you did that.”

But Cathrine’s hand twisted, and Léon let out a scream of pain. Souveraine smashed two hands into her shoulders and was thrown to the floor by the very same energy that seemed to burst from her skin.

Léon saw death come for him, and he welcomed it. He hoped it would be painful. He wanted her to obliterate his pathetic existence once and for all. And in that desperate embrace of death, he forced his eyes open so the last thing he would ever see of this world would be Henry. On his final gasp of air, he whispered, “I loved you well, Henri. Too well.”

At the words, Henry’s arm shot out, clamping down on his sister’s wrist. She reacted with all the fear and anger in her, as though it were someone else trying to stop her. She pulled away, but Souveraine leapt to her feet and slammed Catherine’s crackling hand down on Henry’s chest.

A cry of agony burst out of him. Léon fell to the floor clutching his heart, gasping for air, and Henry sat bolt upright in bed, eyes wide open.

“Henri!” Léon yelled. Catherine scrambled back, terrified of what she’d done, caught in Souveraine’s arms, and Léon stumbled across the heaving floor to his bedside. “Darling?” He took a hand to his cheek, Henry staring straight ahead, unseeing, hand still clenched on his sister, who cried as she twisted her face into Souveraine. “Henri!” Léon called even louder. “You fight it! Listen to me. Tell it to die. Tell it to die, like you did the bird. There are things inside you and they live. Tell them to die. Kill them!”

Henry’s lips made the slightest tremble.

“Wake up, Henri!” Léon begged. “Wake!”

Henry’s eyelids heavied, a flutter, slowly closing. “Wake up!” Léon wept. “Feel me and wake up!” He wrapped two arms around Henry, grabbed the back of his head and forced a kiss to his lips. A long and lingering kiss that had all his heart, all his love in it. The last chance he would ever have to try to tell Henry how much he adored him. He scrunched fingers into his hair, running a hand down his cheek. “Please, Henri, I love you so. Please. Just say it. Die. Die !”

A deep breath pulled into Henry’s lungs, and “Die,” he whispered once. He fell back on the pillow, his hand dropping from Catherine’s wrist, his body limp in Léon’s arms.

“Henri, no, no.” Léon fell across his stomach in tears, as Catherine crept up to Henry’s shoulder to cry against his chest.

Souveraine, caught between her love for the two of them, turned her grief into duty. She brought émile in from the stables, where Destroyer had sheltered him against the storm, the first red rain Paris had ever seen. She drew the curtains across the cold, broken windows, stoked the fire, then helped émile into Henry’s large bed, nestling him between herself and Catherine. She stroked his hair, her eyes on Léon’s bereft frame clinging to Henry, and the room sat silent as a mausoleum all the long night through.